This is a story of N=(N-3)+(N+1), even though I plan to catch-and-release this one locally. And I
hardly call it C&V, but since steel MTB's are a thing now, I decided to give it a go.
Short story long, last weekend, I dragged three framesets to the neighborhood scrap fellow. Before you ask: No, all three were past it. Now, thing is, there's two scrap fellows on the same street. And this other fellow had frames. Lots of MTB frames. Apparently, a local shop has been sending him their rough junk to help him out, and this rough junk included a really beat Gary Fisher Joshua, along with a "red thing with an XT rear derailer." I bought both.
This red thing turned out to be a 1994 Stumpjumper FS, under a surprisingly decent red paint job, free of overspray on everything except the inner chainring.
At any rate, it's clear someone loved this enough to take it apart to repaint, and - eventually - someone thought enough of it to try to bring it back to the original green paint. Then gave up.
I can't blame them; it's rough.
...but not rough enough.
I fully intended to pull the RD off and send it back to the Truck of the Great Beyond. Then the seatpost came out without issue, changing the entire fate of this thing.
Thing is, I have a 1990's Araya MTB wheelset kicking about right now. It came off a wrecked Schwinn Mesa SS, along with a Tange Struts GS fork that should also fit this. Said parts are not show quality, but they're usable. The prospect intrigued me, even though I know it'll
always be a beater.
So I broke out the citrus stripper and some fine-grade scuff pads with a spritz of WD40 on them. I wasn't about to wetsand the red paint off (like one should if they really
care about the bike), but just wanted to rip it off efficiently enough without taking off too much of the original green.
Not great, but already an improvement. We can see what it is now at least - an El Stumpyjunky.
Speaking of junk, here's the Tange fork. It's one of those elastomer jobs, and the elastomers are dead. Should be interesting to figure out how I can cheese a cheap workaround that won't cost an arm and a leg for a fork that's worth half of the price of the elastomers.
As I was stripping some more of the paint this evening, I got a great bad idea: Since some of the paint is through to the metal, why not rat rod it with a transparent paint similar to the original green to homage what it looked like when new?
Or, more accurately, "This thing looks like crap, I have some transparent green paint close to the original color - let's find out if this weird idea actually works." Note the Fisher Joshua in the back.
It's an arsty-fartsy look, but I think it works and should help protect a bit of the bare bits. At the end of the day, this is going to go on the Evilbook Marktplatz for far less than the time I put into it anyway, so any bottom feeder who just has to have a '94 Stumpy will probably be pleased enough.
This is where the project stands at the moment. Obviously, there's some more paint to remove before I can spray the whole thing. Will keep updating as it progresses.
-Kurt